The second most common punctuation mistake according to Copyblogger is The Comma Splice, “When the comma is used to separate independent clauses, there must be a conjunction connecting them. If the conjunction is not there, we have a comma splice.” Kim Brooks at Salon complained recently that her “college students don’t understand commas, far less how to write an essay,” while the OUP Blog asserted that teaching commas doesn’t necessarily equate teaching writing.

Next up we have Quotation Marks for Emphasis (sometimes called “scare quotes”). Copyblogger says, “Quotation marks are mainly used to quote speech, sentences or words,” and “can also be used to denote irony” (or as Cracked puts it, “Repeat something someone said in a high pitched girly voice”). And while quotation marks shouldn’t be used “to add emphasis to a word or sentence,” one still finds plenty of “advertisements or promotional flyers carrying this error,” which The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks can attest to.